The Ricochet Podcast - Filibuster!

Episode Date: March 7, 2013

After a brief hiatus, the Ricochet Podcast returns this week with our old friends Pat Sajak and Mickey Kaus. We talk filibusters, drones, that dinner with the President, democracy Twitter-style, the benefits of free online courses, sequestration, immigration, and tax cuts. It’s a veritable verbal verisimilitude of vocal viscosity — in other words, our own homegrown filibuster. Music from this week’... Source

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I'm James Lileks and I can't make out who our guest is here, so I'm going to have to buy an A, please. Oh, it's Pat Sajak. Great. We've got Pat for the full hour and we've got Mickey Cousins as well. It's not exactly filibuster length, but we've got ourselves a podcast here. Let's go. There you go again. Welcome, everybody.

It's the Ricochet Podcast, number 158, special Rand Paul filibuster edition. I've been talking for 17 hours straight. A couple hours ago, I was reading the transcripts of Lenny Bruce, reading the transcripts of the Warren Commission report on stage. That's what happens after you've been talking for a day and a half. But I'm going to yield my time in a second to a couple of learned gentlemen.

But first, I've got to warn you, you know, if you haven't gone to Ricochet.com slash Hillsdale yet, then you're missing out on a free course on the Constitution and Western Heritage. It's like being a Hillsdale student without even you're missing out on a free course on the Constitution and Western Heritage. It's like being a Hillsdale student without even leaving your house. And if you're one of those Yahoo employees who's been forced to leave their house and

go back to work, you appreciate exactly what that means. In the meantime, while we wait for Rob Long, happy to welcome Peter Robinson and ta-da, Pat Sajak back to the podcast. Hey, guys, how'd you, were you up all night watching the filibuster? I am. Matt Sajak, back to the podcast. Hey, guys, how'd you – were you up all night watching the filibuster? I am. And by the way, I saw a lot of it. And for you, 17 hours is like a chat.

Long-winded, yes. I know. I could have been crisper with that little opening. A mere clearing of the throat. That's right. I watched – I checked in on it over and over again and I happened to be on it wasn't as dramatic a time i guess it was about 9 39 9 midnight little after midnight back east when rand paul drew it all to a close a great moment i thought not that moment not his drawing it to a close but a great a great 12 hours let's put it that way pat did you enjoy well i did i mean i i um i have mixed feelings about the subject matter, but it's hard not to get excited by it for some reason.

There's something about this, you know, the Mr. Smith quality and sort of the cheapening of the filibuster over the years. I like this form of it. There's a drama to it, obviously. And I admire the guy. You know, there are very few guys who will stand up for anything these days. Right. Here's what I noticed is that the Twittersphere was going nuts over this, partially because their tweets were being read on the Senate floor, which everyone saw as the equivalent to dragging in the Saxon mail during the Mr. Smith goes to Washington filibuster scene. But but but at the same time, though, while the right side is

going nuts and saying this is a great moment for America, I go to our local news sites and the CBS station thinking that they might have a story on the front page about this. Their top story is Zubat's pants are back. And I went to the newspaper site, and nobody had anything on the front page. On the politics page, they had absolutely nothing. So does this make a dent at all? Well, does anyone find it ironic that a filibuster, which is intended to last hours and hours, is being filled by tweets, the shortest form of communication? You really have to stretch through. You have to pause between the individual characters to make

them go all night. You know, I believe I heard Rob Long waving in the background and calling for attention. Rob, are you with us? I am. I'm sorry. I was searching around the house with my headphones. Is that Pat Sajak I hear? It is, but you can't have my headphones. We're discussing.

No, that's okay. That's all right. We know you slept in because you were watching The Filibuster all night. Tell us, do you think that this was a great moment of theater that accomplished a lot or something that just made the right feel good? Well, I think it's possible to do both of those things. I enjoyed it because I found it old-timey and about something and energizing. And even though it was quixotic, it was about something. And there was an interesting optics, which I don't know whether that matters for us or our side or the other side or the country as a whole. But the very night that Rand Paul and a bunch of young Turks in the Senate were kind of leading this rearguard action about something, the old guard was eating dinner with Obama at the Jefferson Hotel.

Talking about the budget. Now, I suspect that there's going to be more interest in the next 48 hours in the aftermath of the sequester, of the filibuster, although I could be wrong, than there is about the outcome of that dinner, which seemed to me to be a lot more about Kabuki theater and a lot less about something real than rand paul could be careful there could be a drone with your name on it ron yeah in fact there could be pat made the point that he's queasy about the subject matter so let's just go ahead and go into that for

a moment if we may the wall street journal put up an editorial during the filibuster that said calm down senator uh i put up a post on Ricochet. Richard Miniter took on Rand Paul on the arguments. And you have to say this about Rand Paul and about the filibuster. Leader McConnell, Senator McConnell, tried very hard to hold the Republican conference together in voting against Chuck Hagel. And Rand Paul was only one of four Republican senators who voted instead to confirm Chuck Hagel. So on Rand Paul's reading of the Constitution, the president of the United States is entitled deference, even when he's appointing an incompetent who is on the record as suspicious of Israel and encouraging toward Iran. Advice,

the Senate's duty to advise, offer advice and consent to the president means to Rand Paul almost nothing. And yet here we get Rand Paul tying up the Senate for 12 hours on a point on which he may very well have been wrong. And that was extremely odd ground on which to make a stand anyway, does the federal government have the right to shoot a drone at someone who's known to be a terrorist if the terrorist is not an imminent threat? And you know what? Abraham Lincoln would have had no trouble with that. He had Grant bombard and starve out Vicksburg, which was filled with civilians. He had Sherman burn Atlanta to the ground. And there's a pretty good argument that Senator Paul would either have to say that Abraham

Lincoln was right or that Attorney General Holder was, I beg your pardon, that Abraham Lincoln was wrong or that Attorney General Holder was right. So it struck on the arguments, Pat will have his own say, no doubt, but on the arguments, it was a very odd place to make a stand. And I concluded about halfway through the day that it didn't really matter. What mattered was that somebody was making a stand. Somebody was standing up literally and literally talking back to the administration. And furthermore, to me, I think this may be the most meaningful aspect of what happened yesterday, but time will tell.

The rules in the Senate have changed. Just as Rob said, the senior members of the Republican conference, the old bulls, the men who think they are in charge of this, the men and a couple of women were off having dinner with Barack Obama. And it was the new, young, forthrightly conservative guys who figured out first that they needed to rally to Rand Paul's side. So there was Ted Cruz and there was Marco Rubio and there was Mike Lee of Utah and on and on it went. I thought it was a very important moment, even though Rand Paul was making a stand on odd ground. There, I just gave something of a filibuster myself.

Pat, are you still awake? No, I am. I yield to the senator from Maryland. No, I agree with you that to me the subject matter was less important than the symbolism of the whole thing. And I like that, and I think that's what energized people more than anything else. I mean, there are some things I would rather have a line drawn in the sand on. And, you know, there is the slippery slope argument in terms of drones. I don't want them going after jaywalkers and that kind of thing.

But again, I think that took a backseat to the fact that someone was willing to stand up and take an issue on directly. I have to agree with Pat. I don't know if it was about nothing actually, Peter. I mean the Abraham Lincoln argument just seems – or the George Washington argument always strikes me as a little bit disingenuous. We're not talking about wartime. We're not actually talking about a declared war. We're talking about armies opposing each other and opposing forces gathering together and spies

and guerrilla tactics on a soil. We're talking about American citizens being picked off by a drone, set to pick them off. And it gets very, very close to what bothered people about the kinds of the excesses we've already seen from the federal law enforcement agencies like Ruby Ridge and Waco. And those were unpleasant because the people who were the victims there were not our ordinary – were not great and powerful citizens and they weren't people necessarily I want to have dinner with. But they were American citizens and they were – it is a fair interpretation to say those people were killed by the government for no reason without due process. And we let them do it and it's not as if these things are unprecedented. The people who are worried about drone attacks on American citizens, they may be nuts in a million different ways. But in this way, they are not nuts.

There is precedent for this and it is a little scary. And pat ourselves on the back. I think I just did a better job of presenting Eric Holder's side of the argument than it did Eric Holder. And you just did a better job of presenting Rand Paul's side of the argument than did Senator Paul in any event. But the argument – good, good. We just had a lovely, lovely little debate. You know, why don't we – oh, oh, OK. I'm sorry.

James has to go. I was going to say this could be a 12-hour podcast. That would be interesting to see how many people could stay awake during this thing. Twelve hours would be – I'd have to leave after eight. Okay. That's a busy man. I have to walk the dog later. Speaking of walking the dog, I'm looking out the window. I'm in Maryland at this moment. I'm looking out the window at what was to have been somewhere between 4 and 12 inches of snow last night and during the day yesterday.

The total here was no flakes at all. Businesses were closed. Washington was nearly shut down in anticipation of a storm, which was essentially rain for the most part in this area. And it occurs to me how, and I don't know if it's this whole global warming thing, but how we are now putting more stock in the forecast, which as a former weatherman, I can tell you, continue to be wrong more often than they're right. And yet we're now buying into this thing before the fact. It used to take a snowstorm to shut a place down.

Now it's a guy on the Weather Channel telling you there is going to be a snowstorm that shuts it down. I don't get it. You spent enough time in L.A. to know that there's that weird, you know, apocalyptic stuff they do in the local news when it's going to rain. It's like Stormwatch in the Southland. Everybody gets very serious and they turn up the scary music. And there's always the role of rain sloshing down the streets. And people here just go – they freak out with a little bit of rain. I'm always surprised that the same thing happens back east.

That wasn't my – growing up there. But at least it used to be the snow had to be falling before someone said we should close something. Schools were closed the night before. It's a very strange thing. And now they've taken to naming the snowstorms as if it's a hurricane. You're kidding. This is Storm Leon or whatever it is. Yeah.

I don't think I'm very afraid of Storm Leon. I'd spend five more minutes on a better, you know, Storm Wendell. When you say they, however, though, they is the Weather Channel. They is some guy at the Weather Channel who says, you know what? We've got to hype these things as much as possible. Let's give them names. That'll catch on. And the rest of us, everyone else in the world is saying, no, no, no.

Sorry, we're not going to use your names. Nobody uses these names. The only people is the Weather Channel. Everyone laughs and points at them because it's a preposterous notion. I mean, we here in Minnesota just had nine, ten inches of snow. I mean, what, Pat, you're supposed to have gotten, we got it first. It spent itself here. It had nothing by the time it got to you. Now, whether or not that was one storm, that was Leon or Willard or Xerxes or whatever we're up to right now. Xerxes, I like that one. No. Snowstorm Xerxes.

The only thing that deserve names are hurricanes that come from the ocean and go west and slam into Florida and or Texas. That's it, period. But Pat raises a great point because there is this – I have this problem in television or in media. I think everybody in every business has the problem, which is that there's this desire to create a false sense of certainty about things for which we have only uncertainty. And we cling to our – we anoint experts and no one ever gets in any trouble for obeying the expert even though the expert is almost always wrong. So in media business or in Hollywood, they focus group these movies. They focus group these TV shows and they tell you at the beginning of the season, this is going to be a hit.

It is scientifically preordained by very complicated market research mechanisms. Nine out of ten people surveyed say they want to see this TV show. They will find it. You will be hit. But go ahead and go and buy that Rolls Royce now and the beachfront real estate in Malibu because you're going to be rich. But the people who are wrong on these things, whether it's weather forecasters, whether it's horse race touts, whether it's sports prognosticators, when they're wrong, they come back the next week and they're still experts. That's the part. Exactly right.

Because we need an expert more than we need an expert to be correct. We just need to have this like witch doctor shaman that we can point to who's going to like guide us through all the uncertainties of the world. Just the way sort of ancient tribes did with their witch doctor. Like he was probably wrong 50 percent of the time, right? But I'd rather live in a world where I have a witch doctor than live in a world where I don't. That's almost a definition of the difference between business and showbiz. I noticed ages ago, way back during the Reagan years when the McLaughlin group started. Do you remember that show?

Well, it's still on as a matter of fact. John McLaughlin is still running the show and the end of the show would be prediction Pat Buchanan. And it was always wrong. And it was – and never – not always wrong but pretty nearly always wrong. And the next week, did John McLaughlin say, well, Pat Buchanan, you got your prediction wrong. No, no, no. Because the imperative was not to be correct, which it would be in business. In business, you get it right or you get a pay cut.

But in showbiz, the imperative is to be interesting and to be entertaining. Peter, do Gabby Hayes. We know Peter could do Cary Grant. That was a good John McLaughlin. The last November election was a good example of this. I mean, all the folks who came on and told us why this was going to be a Romney blowout are still going around and will be making predictions

in the next cycle and, you know, with impunity. Although, God bless him, Roger Ailes, who's a topic unto himself now that Vanity Fair published an excerpt from the new book about Roger. Roger Ailes, and I think to his credit,

said to certain prognosticators, no thanks, your contract will not be renewed. You called this one wrong, and my audience is a little ticked off about that. Well, that's a good point. And that's why. See, if we don't have experts like Rahm says, then it calls into question the whole notion of credentials,

and we have a class of people who believe very much in credentials. I mean, if you've got enough speaking contracts behind you and you've been on TV enough times, that's your credential. If you're from the right college, that's your credential. And if that doesn't mean anything, then all of these little terms and degrees that people have been awarding to each other mean absolutely nothing.

We can't have that. College has got to mean something. And the college you went to has got to mean even more. But, you know, the thing is you'll never find anybody popping up on television and saying, yes, I'm a Hillsdale graduate from the online school, but give it a matter of time, a couple of years, it's going to happen. It's the way the industry has got to go. It's cheap.

You can do it from home, and if you're a Ricochet member, listening, ricochet.com slash Hillsdale is where you want to go right now. Why? Well, we hear a lot of talk about liberty and equality terms being thrown around. But you know, people mean different things by that. President Obama may mean different things by liberty and equality than the founders did when they wrote the Declaration of Independence. We, the people, to use a phrase, to coin one, need to understand what it means to be free. And that requires a history lesson. And who's going to teach us? Well, Hillsdale a phrase, to coin one, need to understand what it means to be free and that requires a history lesson.

And who's going to teach us? Well, Hillsdale College is going to teach us. Hundreds of thousands of people took their free constitution or western heritage courses. Now Hillsdale offers what the country needs just at the right time. So go there to hillsdale.com slash, I'm sorry, ricochet.com slash hillsdale and you'll see that they've created a 10-week online history course called American Heritage. It's based on the course that all the incoming students at Hillsdale are required to take to graduate. In this 10-week course, you can hear Hillsdale presidents Larry Arnn and other members of the history faculty on topics like the American founding, the crisis of the Union, the Civil War, America's rise to a global power, Pat Sajak's role in the creation of great game shows, and the Reagan Revolution.

The course has lectures, readings, and quizzes, and all kinds of little pop moments like the one I just slipped in to see if you're paying attention. Okay, folks? So I'm going to shut up, and you're going to go there when the podcast is done. Ricochet.com slash Hillsdale. And get an education online for what? For nothing. It's a free course on American heritage. And we thank, of course, the fine folks at Hillsdale for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. I'm George Fenneman, and I'm going to go back to get a cup of coffee

here and leave you guys to the important things. Can I just jump in for a minute? Because I feel like we don't, I mean, obviously, Hillsdale is very close to Ricochet for a whole lot of reasons, not least that it's the repository of the gigantic brain that Paul Ray carries around in his head and thinks his big thoughts. So if it did nothing else other than sort of offer Paul Ray shelter from the storm, it'd be enough. And if it did nothing else other than be sort of a sort of lonely lighthouse beacon there to people who are looking for an educational institution that actually teaches and teaches

the truths. But the idea that they're doing this and it's free and you can sign up is about as close to sort of the heroic, classic ideal of an education institution that I can imagine. The idea that they're opening it up and they are this sort of lighthouse for everyone, for all of us, especially in light of the fact that we still talk about these things. We spent 15 minutes ago, Peter, you and I were talking about whether the Constitution, and we mentioned Washington and Lincoln, and these are not issues that are subtle or strange or subtextual. They are front and center in every argument we have from Obamacare to drones to the role of America in the world to the role of the citizen and the responsibilities and the

rights of a citizen in America. And the idea that they are doing this and that we can all participate in this class, it's just it's sort of astonishing. It's really I mean, it's almost the best thing about education in America today. And I mean I'm signing – I've signed up and I follow them and I watch – and the lectures are really, really good. And there's always something new there. It's just great. I'm just sort of gushing. Go ahead.

Could I gush a little bit as well? This is Hillsdale Day but why not? Every day should be Hillsdale Day. The intellectual content is, of course, first rate. But could I just write a little brief little mash note on this minute? Well, talk a little mash note to Larry Arnn. Larry Arnn is so much fun to listen to. He reminds me, Larry must have been told this a hundred times, But he reminds me of the great Civil War historian Shelby Foote in that Larry grew up in Arkansas. He has this gentlemanly southern manner. And after about two or three minutes of listening to him, you realize that he also has a gigantic mind.

He commands the history of the Constitution. Yet he conveys it as if you were just having a chat on a front porch in, I don't know, in Hot Springs or somewhere. He just has such, as teachers, some teachers have the sort of paper chase, pound, pound, pound, you will remember this, Mr. Long, you will not forget this, Mr. Sajak. And what Larry does is almost the opposite pedagogic technique. He just draws you in through the sheer enjoyableness of wanting to hear him talk. Now, may I gush? Gush. Go ahead.

Because as you may know, I sit on the board of Hillsdale. I'm the vice chairman of the board of Hillsdale College. Maybe you don't know that. Who's chairman? Who's chairman? Bill Brodbeck is his name. So the thing is if he's felled by an assassin's bullet, you just instantly become the chairman? Or a drone possibly.

I was about to say I'm actually looking at a drone possibility for Bill. But I couldn't agree with everything you say more than I do. And Larry is an old friend. I served on the board of Claremont Institute when Larry started it out in California years ago. And what's great about him is everything you said, but he is – there's nothing professorial about him. I mean he is a man's man, as we used to say, and an earthy guy and a fun guy, but one of the brightest men you will ever know. But here's what I want to say about this great place. Sorry, folks, to be doing a half hour commercial for Hillsdale. But it's a fabulous place with great reach, which is amazing because

if you look at the street sign going in, it says middle of nowhere is where it is. It's a little town in southeast Michigan. It's a beautiful place. But it's a small school, 1,300 kids. They don't accept a nickel of federal or state aid, which allows the following conversation to take place at a board meeting last week. We were talking about it just informally, talking about politics. And we started talking about the Hispanic vote. And Larry said something to me, which is quite telling, and it was just an offhand remark. He was talking about Hispanic students. He said, yeah, you know, we have some here.

I've seen them around. In other words, he had no clue how many. He didn't care. It wasn't important, and I think that's the way it's supposed to be. You bet it is. And the reason Hillsdale can teach is because it's not worried about that stuff. It's worried about the content and character of the institution and of the students who attend there. And that's why these online courses are terrific, because

that same sensibility finds its way into that. And that's all I have to say. I think it's more than that. I mean, you're right. But it's the fact that it's free and we're not selling anything. The fact that they're doing this for free, that they believe it's their sort of sacred responsibility as a learning institution to spread learning and that it doesn't really matter these days that they're in the middle of nowhere. If you're, I mean, if an undergraduate there, it does.

But if you're not, you can still benefit from these very impressive, I mean, Larry Arnn, I've heard, I mean, I've been at dinner with Larry Arnn and I think he's demolished me 17 million times before the appetizer in a informal debate. and I sort of loved every minute of it. But the idea that they're doing that is about as important as I think anything is. They are educating citizens the way citizens need to be educated, which is as useful as arming them and reminding them that they have rights and that we're here for a reason and we got here following a certain path and we made mistakes along the way and we corrected those mistakes and we overcorrected those mistakes and and that there's a story a narrative about the

american experiment which is worth uh studying from a critic they're not it's not uncritical but but from a from a perspective that is thoughtful and not just fraught and smothered with the current left-wing ideology that sort of blankets everything else in all the other colleges in the country practically. And I'm thinking more or less that there's a thing called the Khan Academy. I don't know if anybody knows this. This guy started this – he's a sort of Indian – I think he's like first or second generation American and he started – he's a computer guy in the Silicon Valley and he started recording videos to help his cousins with their homework, videos mostly about math and science and putting them on YouTube. And they got so popular and they were so thoughtful and clean and clear that he began to sort of record videos about everything. And this guy is a complete hero I think for doing what he's doing. clean and clear that he began to sort of record videos about everything. And, and this guy's a complete hero,

I think for doing what he's doing. He's certainly subverting the current ideas of what it means to go to school and what you're learning in school, public schools anyway. And I think Hillsdale is doing exactly that. And that's why I feel like it's sort of our responsibility to take this class because, because Eric Holder doesn't understand it. we better may i may i may i gush oh yeah sure because i've just i've just opened a carotid artery here and

sponge it off with a tie the reason that we have to do this you're absolutely right about eric holder and it goes back to what we were talking before when holder was being asked about whether or this is constitutional, he came up with all of these weasel words that everybody employs these days. He couldn't even bring himself to say it right. Couldn't even say that it was wrong. He was putting it in the terms of appropriate or inappropriate, which is quite different we're headed, where the Constitution is an annoyance, an encumbrance, and you roll your eyes at the people who cite it because they might as well be fluoride-terrified birchers, right? It's a matter of whether or not it's right or wrong or appropriate or inappropriate. So maybe this is giving people too much intellectual ammunition for a battle that everyone else is – I mean it's like giving people a Swiss army knife when everyone else is coming to the argument with a sponge. It doesn't make any difference whether or not you know the Constitution because the

Constitution doesn't matter. So this is the fight we're in, guys. I'll ask you, Pat, how do we actually bring the Constitution first and forward to these debates so that, you know, holders' arguments seem as ridiculous to everyone as they do to us. Well, I mean, part of what we've talked about with what Hillsdale is doing is, I mean, that is the answer. It's the long-term answer because the more, you know, people have been, I don't want to say brainwashed, but they have, they've heard the kind of stuff you're talking about. And they tend, a lot of people tend to think of the Constitution as increasingly irrelevant in their lives.

But as you learn about it, as Hillsdale, for example, is trying to do, it matters. It matters. As thousands of people learn about it, it matters. As they're reintroduced to it, it matters. And that's going to make a difference in the long run. That really was the meaning of the filibuster yesterday, wasn't it? Not that – well, Rob and I get into this little mini debate right here about, well, no. Does the federal government under the constitution have the right to do that. What was going on yesterday was that Rand Paul was insisting on rising to make a constitutional point. And Ted Cruz backed him

up in the hearing yesterday morning with Eric Holder by saying, no, no, General Holder, I'm not asking about propriety. I'm asking whether it would be constitutional. Marco Rubio, all those fellows were on the floor of the Senate yesterday to stand up for the Constitution. Maybe a comeback is underway. But by the way, every one of those fellows – good question. I don't know if Hill still has the data on this. I'd be willing to bet that at least a couple of those fellows who spoke in the Senate yesterday and for sure the young people, some of the young people on their staffs have taken the Hillsdale course. This notion that you – it requires – at a minimum, it requires reading the document. Once you read the document, you job to stick up for the Constitution and that may be enough, Pat.

Yeah, I think – I mean that's – it better be because that's where it lies. That's all we've got. You can't – I mean that's at the heart of it and I think we'll get there. I think people are invigorated by programs such as what we're talking about with Hillsdale. It's not just another piece of your education. It goes to the heart of this nation and I think it really excites people and they should have a look at it if they haven't. I have one more thought. I have one more thought, but if we've done enough on the Constitution. Pat and I happened to be in Washington together last week.

It was a rare pleasure to set eyes on Patrick. And we happened to be at a dinner in the presence of Mr. Justice Antonin Scalia. And he made the following point, just in conversation, but it was really profound, that country after country after country has a Bill of Rights. He believes that the most important part of the Constitution is the bit of the Constitution that comes before the Bill of Rights, that it takes pains to present federalism, separation of powers between the federal government and the states, and in particular separation of powers between Congress and the president and the Supreme Court. And Justice Scalia said dictatorships have bills of rights.

Putting together a bill of rights is easy. Putting together a government where trampling the bill of rights is hard that's the difficult part and what was going on again yeah i just i'm to me the more i think about that filibuster yesterday although the specific the immediate grounds make me a little bit queasy what rand paul was doing was insisting on separation of powers again a constitutional point as he put it at the very beginning of the filibuster, no president gets to be judge and jury. That just isn't the president's job. Well, that was all amusing coming from Scalia because according to today's cartoon in the Star Tribune newspaper, Scalia is on a bench feeding a very large bird, a black bird that's marked Jim Crow.

So given the endemic systemic born-in-the-marrow racism of Scalia, I can dismiss out of hand everything that he said. But when you talk about the Bill of Rights, somebody, I don't know why, shipped me a copy of the Egyptian Constitution, the new one, and it's a wonderful document. I mean, it's so chock full of rights. You got a right to everything. You got a right to good teeth and clean fingernails

and television show when you want it. And it just states over and over, such and such is a right and shall be respected as though that's all you gotta do. But you're right. You're absolutely right, Peter, that it's the mechanism, the separation of powers, what Rand Paul did.

And what I hate to do is see it come up over something like this. But on the other hand, I love this issue because this gives us, if not an insight into the schism of the left, then an insight into what they will accept for partisan purposes. As somebody put it on Twitter, it's not okay to waterboard a foreigner, but it is okay to take a missile to an American citizen. So, I mean, you got to lay that out for them. That was bad, right? Putting the guy's head underwater until he gave up the name of the guy who was behind 9-11, that's bad. But shooting some guy in a cafe with a Hellfire missile from above and maybe taking out 10 or 11 people around him because you just don't want to be arsed to go to his house and arrest him and it's easier this way. That's OK.

OK. Thank you, Rachel. I think that's a really good point, James. of the Bush administrations probably like the last – the year before, 2003 to 2007 practically. It was waterboarding 24-7. You would find waterboarding on the front page and the page two and the page three of the New York Times in various places. People referred to it in the dining section. It was on a Wheaties box for a while. Yeah, it was the most important issue ever.

And Dick Cheney and whoever was the attorney general at the time, the person who caught most of it was Ashcroft at the very beginning of the post 9-11 period, was the poster boy for evil. And it was always waterboarding bad. And the rights of U.S. citizens are paramount. And they are coming to get you. Our ricochet colleague, John Yoo. Don't forget what – Oh, yeah.

And it was evil what they were doing abroad, but it was especially insidious what they were doing here. We're shredding the constitution. I think shredding the constitution, if you Google it, is really one of these fantastic phrases that appeared every minute or at least hourly in the mainstream media for eight years of Bush administration from September 12th, 2011 to inauguration day. And then it stopped. Like you could hear a pin drop. We haven't heard about waterboarding. We haven't heard about any of this stuff. And what's so hilarious to me is that if you simply told someone in 2006 that a glimpse of the future, a US attorney general in 2013 was going to make a statement in a hearing about how we could send drone attacks to American citizens on American soil and that a senator would filibuster – filibuster would be the result of that, that person would be – their head would explode. If you told a liberal that, his head would explode if you said, oh, and by the way, the

president is Barack Obama. His attorney general is Eric Holder and the person doing the filibuster is Rand Paul. That would have been insane. They would have thought it was a bizarro world of the future. But of course the truth is that it was – as always with the left, it's never about the issue or the principle ever. It's only about the political score you can make. By the way, Rob, I have resolved never, ever to permit a discussion of waterboarding to

take place without asking the following question. In total, to how many terrorists did the bush administration subject to water boarding do you happen to know the answer and you do i take it i do the answer is three three years of non-stop they're shredding the constitution and they used it a total of one two three times now you may also meditate on how many people have been killed by drone attacks under the Obama administration. It's a lot more than three. Done. I've just done my civic duty for the day. I've just resolved. People need to know the way the argument proceeds, the assumption is that it happened over and over hundreds of times, that everybody in Guantanamo

is being subjected to waterboarding five times a day. I thought it was like a theme park that people went through. That's an incredible statistic. I have to say, just to remind people who did not hear, the podcast that we did on the national review cruise peter me and james uh and john you was joining us and we were talking it was we did a late night podcast we'll put it that way it was after dinner uh and after dinner and after sort of a certain amount of uh wine everyone was hammered yeah and uh we're talking about john he drinks online and then during the podcast interviewed the waitress when she brought him his drink.

Yes. It was that kind of evening. Go ahead. And we're talking about John Hughes' political career and why he should run for the mayor of Oakland. And James Lilacs, I think, had the line of the year. I'm saying fiscal year, but I could be calendar year too. He said, well, I think that John should run for something maybe a little, you know, start a little smaller, like maybe run for the water board. And there was this silence and it all, it hit us all at once. And we all started

to laugh. And the most fun was watching John Yoo try not to laugh as hard as he wanted to laugh. Well, if I were on a boat and drunk, I would be laughing now. The amusing thing is that if the president had announced that he was closing Guantanamo, or rather let's just say that the president said that he had closed Guantanamo, and that would be the great thing. If it turned out that he closed it by eliminating everybody there with a drone strike, that would be secondary. He would have come up and done the thing that he had said he was going to do. But, you know, John Yoo is not going into politics, which is unfortunate.

We'd like to see him there. And now there's Mickey Kaus. You guys remember Mickey Kaus had a run for the senator from California seat? Oh, how we miss him to this day. Not saying he would have participated in the filibuster, but he would have had something interesting to blog about it. Mickey, after all, practically invented blogging with those of us who were there when the Internet was turned on in its early days,

and he's now plying his trade at the Daily Caller. It requires really no introduction, even though I've done just that. We'd like to welcome back to the podcast our good friend, Mickey Kaus. Hello, can you hear me? We absolutely can. So, Mickey, it's Rob here, your erstwhile – your neighbor, actually. Not even erstwhile, your neighbor. Mickey and I both live in Venice.

We live a few blocks from each other. So it does seem to me like there are two sort of parallel issues happening. One is gun control. The other is the immigration debate. How is – if the sequester happens, is Obama's immigration reform juggernaut going to succeed? Or are we going to find some kind of thread the needle some kind of more conservative way? I mean I know this is your issue. So help us figure out the next two months.

Well, I think he recognizes and the pro-immigration reform, pro-amnesty people recognize that they have a short window where they want to get it done quickly before the summer or maybe passing the final bill at the end of the summer. And the sequester fight sort of screws that up because it prevents immigration from taking center stage. It causes hurt feelings. It just sort of occupies media space. And if you try to do, it's very hard, it would be very hard for him to pull off sort of an ongoing sequester fight,

a gun control fight, and an immigration fight, and have a high percentage of possibility of immigration getting through. I thought he'd come to his senses and just surrendered on sequester. In other words, the sequester's going through. They're going to try to make it as unpainful as possible, and they're going to go on to some sort of continuing resolution tussle that's not going to be apocalyptic. So that issue is off the table. That doesn't seem to be what has happened, which has heartened me as an opponent of amnesty.

I think he's stupidly prolonging the sequester fight. It all comes down to Speaker Boehner. I mean, something might pass the Senate. It would probably have a majority in the House, but not a majority of Republicans. So if Boehner cues to the Hastert rule, which is he's not going to bring it to the floor unless it's a majority of Republicans, it fails. If he violates the Hastert rule, as he's done a few times already this year. Then it might pass. The Republicans are going to sort of propose piecemeal reforms instead of a blanket amnesty. Then maybe they go to conference.

And if the Republicans hang tough in conference, maybe nothing will come out of conference. But I think Obama really recognizes he needs a bill now that he can't wait until after he hypothetically wins back the House in 2014. So I think I think, you know, I I think he'll settle even for something without a path for citizenship. Mickey, Peter Robinson here. Why does he need the bill now? It was struck right from the get go. You said the amnesty people understand they have until summer. Why? Well, the argument is that the closer you get to the election, the more Republican Republicans start worrying about the 2014 midterms rather than rather than, you know, legislating. conservative electorate who might be annoyed. But it's probably also true in the Senate with people in sort of swing states from relatively conservative Western, Midwestern areas. So that's the argument.

I mean, it is a bit of conventional wisdom, but it does – the other argument they make is the analogy was you have to bake the cake and serve it quickly before you can't leave it out on the picnic table where the ants eat it. And the more you learn about these plans, the more flawed they get. Like, you know, there's this scam that, you know, undocumented immigrants are going to have to go to the end of the line. Well, if they really went to the end of the line,

the line is 15 years long in some places. That's not going to happen. So they're obviously going to jump the line, and people are going to realize that and say, wait, this is a fraud. There might be a surge of people crossing the border with all this amnesty talk that tends to be a magnet. That would be some bad publicity. The ICE bureaucracy hates it. All sorts of bad things could happen. Hey, Mickey, Pat Sajak, you said something interesting too about how they need to concentrate on one issue in order to focus the public's attention on it, which is to me one of the great ironies of this age. I mean I understand in the days of three networks, but now with countless outlets, we still are a one-issue world, aren't we?

I mean everyone seems to focus on one thing at a time, whether you're writing about it or talking about it or trying to pass legislation on it. That does seem to be true. It's very male, isn't it? It's like we can't multitask. And I'm not even sure it's true now that you question it. But I do think, for example, on immigration,

there's going to be a point when Boehner has a bill in committee in the House and they have to put pressure on him to bring it to the floor. And that's going to require a sort of coordinated crescendo of media pressure and he's going to have to go and campaign and beat Boehner about the head and that the media will be willing to cooperate. But it's very hard for them to summon that that that sort of orchestral crescendo on two issues at once. You know, I think maybe immigration reform can sort of bubble under the surface as we debate other things for a few months. But at some point there has to be that crescendo. Mickey, Peter here. One more. Could I just put it the other way around? You're eloquent in your opposition to immigration. But what would you advise Republicans? I interviewed Ted Cruz just last week in Washington and he said, just as a matter of mathematics, this is – if this isn't an exact quotation, this is a close paraphrase.

Either the Republican Party wins support among Hispanics or it becomes irrelevant. So the whole party is staring into an abyss. Ted Cruz himself, interestingly enough, took only 35 percent of the Hispanic vote in Texas, whereas John Cornyn two years earlier took 36 percent. It ain't looking good for Republicans. They feel those who are in a position, not House members who have to get reelected in 18 months, but those who are in a position to take a longer view of things, which is members of the Senate who were recently reelected, Ted Cruz, and people such as Jeb Bush, who aren't office holders, looking, who are able to think in terms of years rather than months, say we've got to do something.

And it seems as though immigration has to be part of that. Tell them why they're wrong. Well, if you look really in the long term, I mean, Latino voters are not – do not tend to be Republicans. And if you pass a bill that gives 11 million more Latinos plus the relatives they can bring in plus their children the vote, that's 20 million people who even if you get 40 percent, you're losing 60-40. The math doesn't add up. You can't make it up in volume. So these are people who have midterm time horizons, not long time horizons. I think they could pass these piecemeal bills.

They can go for a mild and modified enforcement first approach where you say – I thought Charles Krautheimer had the solution before he abandoned it. Electronic employment system, do a border fence and do a visa control system and have a pass a law that says when those things are actually in place, when they survive the inevitable legal challenges from La Raza and ACLU and all the groups that are now backing amnesty, but we'll try to knock them out as soon as the bill is passed. When they survive those challenges, then we can have an amnesty and write it into the law, the promise of amnesty. So Republicans would go around and say, look, we are we want an amnesty, but not an irresponsible amnesty. It will happen if we do these things. And I think that will go down pretty that would go down pretty well. Right. Don't we need at the same time need to make a really big distinction between immigration and illegal immigration and breaking the law and coming in legally?

I mean we are encouraging people to come to this country legally and it seems like our side especially, we've allowed that issue to get really murky. Isn't there a way to clean that up? But it is people on my side who are constantly trying to make that distinction and people on the amnesty side. Wait, what side are you on again? I'm a Democrat against amnesty. Otherwise known as a Republican. Go ahead. Well, one day you and I may cross.

That would be a good day. Right to the left of – what is it? Are you a dino? I guess you'd be a dino. Democrats against amnesty would be da. There are not many of them. There was one. But anyway, the answer is we're trying to make the distinction, and yes, that's the distinction that has to be made.

People always say, well, if you're against illegal immigration, then you're against immigration, period, and that's not true. There are some people on my side who are against immigration. I'm not one of them. We just want to control the process so that we can let in a lot of immigrants when we have the institutions and the economy can absorb them, and you can keep control of it when that's not true. How did this issue get so distorted? Because what you just said, I mean there's such to me unquestionable logic about it. How did this happen? How did we get where we are where the idea of being against something which by definition is illegal gives it this anti-immigrant status? Well, because there are politicians who have an interest in making it so. I learned this firsthand during my epic run for Senate in California.

It's pitched on a very crude level. It's pitched in, if you say this, you don't like the brown man. And if you listen to P.O. Lean or you have P.O. Lean translated for you by your waiter at Swingers, they will say he is on the radio every day saying these people don't like the brown man. And if you somehow if you are, you know, take this position, it's billed as racist. It's that simple. You're anti-Latino if you if you are for an enforcement first position.

And that's very hard to combat. Yet the ultimate result of the California politics, which have been dominated by the Democrats and liberals for decades, is that now with this new tax regime, as we learn, it's not just millionaires who are going. They got the money to stay. They're set. They're nice. They got their feet up and they got a view of the ocean. It's the middle class people who are going. They got the money to stay. They're set. They're nice. They got their feet up and they got a view of the ocean. It's the middle class people who are leaving because they can, if they can, which means you have a state that's stratified with lower income people who are coming in just getting started, immigrants, et cetera, and then the top sort of economic maldistribution, inequality that we're always being told is the natural result of untrammeled capitalism. You know, Mickey, you're our senator without portfolio from California.

But if you were the senator, this is our last question for you, what would you do then to address this income inequality that seems to be the direct result of the policies of the liberals? Well, you know, I— Five seconds. I think the taxes you point to are important. I think, you know, I never understood why they couldn't start a huge manufacturing base out in the desert. It seems to me you've got a lot of people who are desperate to work, who do sort of— Because of the triple-spotted dung beetle. people who are desperate to work, who do sort of, you know, they were building, you know. Because of the triple-spotted dung beetle.

The minute they find that guy and they can't find enough of them breeding, then they shut the entire thing down and have the EPA come and confiscate it. You need to somehow cut through all the, and regulations are more important than taxes, I think businessmen will tell you. You need to somehow make it easy to start up manufacturing firms in the state of California and in the country generally. But California especially has more bureaucracy to cut. I'm hearing a big buzz. We assume that that's your handlers shocking you for saying something that's too much on the rightward side of it.

So we're going to have to let you go. As soon as I get close to Rob, they send out a warning. They send out a warning. Well, before we let you go, Mickey, I mean, do you find it difficult? How much hate mail do you get from your side? Not hate mail, but you know what I mean. I get a modest amount of hate mail. I got a lot of hate mail early on in my blogging career, and then people sort of gave up on me, and I wasn't hating anymore.

So it's moderated. So when you go back to D.C. as you do every now and then and you see old friends, they kind of like wonder what happened to you? There's a little bit of that. And not just because of immigration, but mainly because of immigration. But they think I've sort of

gone over to the other side in a way that is disrespectful. I have to start babbling about how much I love Obamacare in order to regain their confidence, which I do readily. I know you do. I know you do. It's not a problem.

It's problematic for all of us. Nobody wants you, Mickey. You're a party of one. You're going to have to choose. We'll run for Senate again. When you do, we'll have you on here and explore your platform in great depth. So we will see you at the Daily Caller.

Never speak. We'll see you at the Daily Caller and we'll have you on the podcast from time to time. And of course, everybody watch the gradual, decade-long transformation of Mickey Kaus into somebody of the right. I think we're two decades into it, three to go. Thanks for being with us today.

Thanks, Mickey. And we've got a few minutes left here with Pat and with Peter and with Rob and myself. And I think we've pretty much settled the world, except somebody noted that Paul Ryan is now going to be having lunch with the president. It's not going to be at the Jefferson Hotel, but is this correct? Is this what you guys are hearing? Is this a PR move that the president is doing so he can say, look, I've talked to these people, I've reached out,

or is this actually somebody who's looking around and seeing that the sequester ploy is not playing as predicted and is attempting actually to find a way out of it that covers him in more glory than he's currently getting the latter the latter when we had hayley barber on this podcast two weeks ago hayley predicted we we our side would win the sequester in public opinion i believe i haven't seen polls but it looks to me that that is just exactly what has happened the sequester's gone through and it's been Barack Obama who has been forced to back down.

It depends. Well, well, well. Go ahead. Go ahead. I would say it depends what you mean by winning. If by winning it is how many people really care about it, then they've lost because most people don't. And they will – they announced the other day I think they were closing the White House to tours. I mean they're going to try things like that to show the impact of this.

Which is transparently obviously a way to put pain on people. Nobody buys that that's because of the sequester. No, and I think the White House got that one so wrong. It turned out somebody, some blogger dug into it just a little bit. You didn't have to dig very deeply. It turns out that the tours are conducted by volunteers. Amazing. And Bader comes out and says, you know, the Capitol is open for tours because we can plan ahead. And then somebody else comes out and pokes through what the White House spends on other things and notes that they

have three official calligraphers who make $277,000 a year, but they can't afford to open it up and have the volunteers drag you through a couple of public rooms. Also, it's a very simple thing. It's a very simple math. People say it's 2.5%. It's nothing. It's nothing. And one of the things that I think Republicans, when they do this, it doesn't necessarily move the ball in bigger issues, but it really is effective,

is to remind people all the stuff the government spends money on and all – there's plenty of stuff in there to talk about and plenty of stuff in there that you can get your 2.5 percent. You can get to 1.5 percent just on the jokey things that are hilarious anyway, the honeybee studies and all that stuff. So it's not that hard. And then when you start getting into larger issues of defense and things like that, I think most Americans, even most conservative Americans think two and a half percent, yeah, I could cut that. But they have another problem and that is on any big political issue, the timing is really bad to get people interested in it at all. The election is over.

People are disengaged from it. They're glad it's over. Let me get on with my life. It's very difficult, except for the, you know, we talk about it all the time. It's very difficult to get the public engaged in anything right now. And I don't say that disparagingly. Good for them. They have lives. And so the idea that they're, I mean, they've kind of turned their backs on that. They'll get re-involved as the next election approaches. But right now, it's a tough time to scare people with stuff like that. I would agree, except that people just got their taxes raised. When the payroll tax holiday ended, all of a sudden there's a bump. So people are saying, wait a minute, I'm paying more in taxes.

And at the same time, we've got this debate about cutting spending. Maybe it's never a good time to have that debate between elections, but coming on the heels of a tax hike, I'm not so sure that's a bad idea. The nerdiest thing I saw, tell me if you guys get this, was a tweet that said that Paul Ryan is going to meet Obama for lunch. His escort is Lando Calrissian. That was brilliant. I just love that. And I'm not going to explain it. I'm going to leave that for people in the chat room and people in the long comment thread at Ricochet to tell me exactly why that's funny. You know, and I keep going back to this filibuster yesterday. This will be a brief point. But when I was in Washington, I spent several days in

Washington and I interviewed a governor and I interviewed a couple of members of the Senate. And I felt frustrated afterwards, not that the world cares, but I felt frustrated because it was clear that Republican governors are doing just fine. Their morale is high. They're cutting taxes. I interviewed Scott Walker of Wisconsin and after that bloody fight, the recall fight, he is doing just fine, moving right ahead with his agenda. But governors don't affect national perceptions of the Republican Party or the conservative cause. That story is in Washington and it seemed to me pretty clear that morale was low among Republican office holders in Washington. And I kept thinking to myself, got these young Turks in the Senate, and if only they could find a voice.

And possibly yesterday, they did begin to finding their voice. Somebody who's not a young Turk, but an office holder, but still a thoroughgoing conservative. Rob reminded me of this in his comment just a moment ago, that Tom Coburn of Oklahoma has been brilliant throughout the sequester. The sequester is $85 billion a year. And just, he was pointing out one thing after another that the government spends much more than that on. And recently, a few days ago, he pointed out the congressional, I believe it was the congressional, some official body, the congressional budget office itself said that there were duplications in the federal government that cost over $300 billion a year. So maybe our guys in Washington are finding a voice.

That's big. Peter, that is the key because I get called in occasionally to talk to small groups of congressmen. They just want some outside. Not that I have anything wise to say, but, you know, the question they ask all the time is some variation of, how do we answer critics who say, how people think we're mean,

people think, what do we do? Well, I don't know. That's, find a voice. I mean, there are issues out there. There are ways to do it. I don't have the answer to that, but I think you're right. I think there's the hope.

There are, someone needs to be able to verbalize these things and we need a group that can do it. And maybe if this Paul Rand thing lights that kind of fire, I don't care what he said. What he did was what's important. We have to take the cool factor back unfortunately because pop culture demands that everybody be cool. And right now the president still has residual cool. The Republicans are still the guys who get out of their carriage on gouty legs and cane an orphan who's come up to beg for a sue. So when we got the cool. That doesn't sound so bad, by the way. I know.

As a matter of fact, good exercise and the sound of the wind as the cane whistles through the air. Are there no workhouses? That's right. So when we got the cool back, thanks to somebody, and it will be – And the more they overreach, the more the depression lifts and the more all the wrist-slitting misery that we felt after November abates. And good times to come. I'm looking forward to this. You have to be hopeful.

And with cheerful guys like you on our side, how can we not? Peter Robinson, the font of cheer and intellect. Pat Sajak, a delight as ever. Rob Long, spreading cheer and comedy. Pat Sajak, a delight as ever. Rob Long, spreading cheer and comedy to the world. I mean, for context, with three guys like you, how can we not recapture the imprimatur

of cool? Hey, guys, we gotta go, but we have to thank you, and we have to thank Hillsdale, of course, for their free online college. That's right, college and free in the same sentence. Of course, on the Constitution and Western Heritage, visit free online college that that's right college and free in the same sentence the course of the constitution and western heritage visit ricochet.com slash hillsdale and please sign up today you'll learn something um guys it's been great and thank you again pat for joining us it's always a pleasure

and we wish you could have you on every single week but we'll take you when we can get you well i'll be here when I can. And with a firm commitment like that, we march into the future. Peter, Pat, Rob, we'll see everybody in the comments. Take refuge from Snowstorm Leon, Pat. Thanks so much. I have to go off and dust off the steps now. I don't know what you fellas are doing now, but I'm off to

crush some triple-spotted dung beetles. I'm going to cane a kid who wants a simple soup. It's not, it was not Storm Leon. What you have on your steps to whisk off is Xerxes' spittle. Have a good day. Next week, fellas. Next week, fellas.

Pat, thank you. Thank you guys. Great to be with you. You talk too much, you worry me to death. You talk too much, you worry me to death You talk too much, you even worry my head You just talk, talk too much You talk about people that you don't know You talk about people wherever you go. You just talk, talk too much.

You talk about people that you've never seen. You talk about people you can make me scream. You just talk, talk too much. Ricochet. Join the conversation. Well, I guess the gentlemen are in a pretty tall hurry to get me out of here. The way the evidence has piled up against me, I can't say I blame them much. And I'm quite willing to go, sir, when they vote it that way. But before that happens, I've got a few things I want to say to this body.

I tried to say them once before and I got stopped colder than a mackerel. Well, I'd like to get them said this time, sir. And as a matter of fact, I'm not going to leave this body until I do get them said. President, will the senator yield? The senator yielded. No, sir, I'm afraid not! No, sir. I yielded the floor once before, if you can remember, and I was practically never heard of again... No, sir, I'm afraid not. No, sir. I yielded the floor once before, if you can remember,

and I was practically never heard of again. No, sir.